The
Treatment Of Servants In Most Countries, I Grant, Is Very Unjust,
And In England, That Boasted Land Of Freedom, It Is Often Extremely
Tyrannical.
I have frequently, with indignation, heard gentlemen
declare that they would never allow a servant to answer them; and
Ladies of the most exquisite sensibility, who were continually
exclaiming against the cruelty of the vulgar to the brute creation,
have in my presence forgot that their attendants had human feelings
as well as forms. I do not know a more agreeable sight than to see
servants part of a family. By taking an interest, generally
speaking, in their concerns you inspire them with one for yours. We
must love our servants, or we shall never be sufficiently attentive
to their happiness; and how can those masters be attentive to their
happiness who, living above their fortunes, are more anxious to
outshine their neighbours than to allow their household the innocent
enjoyments they earn?
It is, in fact, much more difficult for servants, who are tantalised
by seeing and preparing the dainties of which they are not to
partake, to remain honest, than the poor, whose thoughts are not led
from their homely fare; so that, though the servants here are
commonly thieves, you seldom hear of housebreaking, or robbery on
the highway. The country is, perhaps, too thinly inhabited to
produce many of that description of thieves termed footpads, or
highwaymen. They are usually the spawn of great cities - the effect
of the spurious desires generated by wealth, rather than the
desperate struggles of poverty to escape from misery.
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